IGNOU announces fee exemption for transgender students in all courses

New Delhi: The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) on Sunday announced exemption of fees for its transgender students of all programmes.

Vice Chancellor Ravindra Kumar announced the initiative during the 22nd Professor G Ram Reddy Lecture, a release issued by the varsity said.

Representational image. IGNOU

The university holds the lecture on 2 July every year in the memory of the founding vice chancellor of the university Professor G Ram Reddy. It invites eminent educationists and scholars to deliver lecture on higher education, especially in the open and distance learning domain.

JNU vice chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar, who was the chief guest, urged the teaching community to give precedence to quality of life rather than standard of living.

Also present was former vice chancellor of Telangana's Kakatiya University Y Vaikuntham. He advocated spending 6 percent of the GDP on education.

"The government should give freedom and spend 6 percent of the GDP on education. Main thrust should be to devise effective strategies to address the challenges to the growth of education in India and to realise the potential of the country's demographic dividend as envisaged in the national education policy of 2016," said Vaikuntham.